Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China

The New York Times reports on the invisible hand of the free market in Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China:

"Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China."

Read the rest at the NYT...

Feds sue Lucasfilm for 'undermining' VFX artists

Lee Stranahan has a new article on The Huffington Post, Feds Sues Lucasfilm for Undermining VFX Artists.

Update: there's a thread started on A Union for Visual Effects at CG Society, and a long thread on on Reddit, IAMA visual effects artist for the last 14 years on many major films, and don't give a...

Imitation is the sincerest form of competition

Aharon Rabinowitz demoans Boris FX knockoffs of various plug-ins in Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Plagiarism (much of the action is in the comments). It's surely disappointing, and often not well done or presented accurately, but it does seem to be the nature of the world of business campaigns (a martial term).

What is Windows but a continuing knockoff of the Mac OS? Apple itself has cannibalized its own hardware and software developers for many years. And would there be so many free After Effects tutorials exploding onto the scene several years ago without imitating and borrowing from the relatively expensive Total Training tapes and Creating Motion Graphics?

The big filter sets are all about being “me too!” by offering everything & the kitchen sink. That's often good enough if you don't have a big budget. Who knows, in trial evaluations buyers may find the GenArts Sapphire LensFlare as the tipping point over BorisFX, and forgo the extra expense of Knoll Light Factory at $399 or the even better Video Copilot Optical Flares at only $125.

Since they have the the advantage in quality, innovation and training, maybe Red Giant and others could make their keiretsus even more attractive by competing on price -- or just take the BMW route (which probably won't work for Automatic Duck). The whole issue makes me want another go at the Art of War, Code of the Samurai, and the Master of Demon Valley (in Thunder in the Sky: On the Acquisition and Exercise of Power by Thomas Cleary).

What’s a mortgage note? [OT]

I don't have one and wondered, what’s a mortgage note? A union website via Generation Bubble has a clear explanation:

"A mortgage note is the document you signed when you purchased your home loan. Mortgages contain lots of paperwork – but only the original mortgage note with your signature is proof that you owe the debt. That’s why banks need the note to prove that they own the loan and can collect payments from you. The problem is, banks now buy and sell mortgages up and down Wall Street – slicing them up and repackaging them to sell to other banks. The bank you bought your mortgage from two years ago may not be the bank that owns it today. But, in all the shuffle, the mortgage notes often don’t get transferred along with your debt."

Maybe there'll be a return to dark age European legal procedure like trial by combat or trial by ordeal, methods prior to the development of common law by Crusader and Norman influence of Roman and Sicilian Islamic law (shariah law!).

There's more on the many irregularities around "Foreclosuregate" on The Dylan Ratigan Show (Oct 7, 13, 15, etc) and The Daily Show (1st segment Oct 7):

Update: on Oct 20 Democracy Now hosted Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, Foreclosure Moratorium, Government Stimulus Needed to Revive US Economy. Also, see What Happened to Change We Can Believe In? by Frank Rich.

Later on Salon, Andrew Leonard has much of What you need to know about the foreclosure mess: One side accuses banks and their robo-signers for fraud; the other blames deadbeat borrowers. Who's right?, plus Truthout features Foreclosuregate Explained: Big Banks on the Brink ... of bankruptcy.

Final Cut Studio 4: a double scoop

Yesterday Mac Soda mused on Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop, which sent some all atwitter. The article is necessarily speculative and perhaps more fanboy than drivel. Philip Hodgetts, a successful developer and seer of trends, responded quickly with Final Cut Studio 4: The Inside Scoop (from MacSoda), which has its own set of counterpoints well-taken and conjectures (sorry but Nuke is the replacement for Shake).

Hodgetts also recently looked at Apple's AV Foundation and the future of QuickTime (which is quite deep and links to even more deepness on iOS video).

These articles are definitely more fun than the Spring reports of Final Cut retooling for the consumer market. Since the alternatives are uncertain, with Avid apparently still suffering financially and Adobe as yet unproven (and not endorsed by major filmmakers), one can hope that Apple remains committed to the competition even if more out of spite than fast cash.

Update: Even with Apple dragging its feet, the presumed Exodus from Final Cut to Adobe Premiere CS5 seems to have stalled. Oliver Peters explained why a few months ago; see Will CS5 and MC5 toast FCP?

Update 2: Todd Kopriva posted about Premiere Pro overview documents for Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer users. Users switching platforms at this point may only be about money at the lower end, since Premiere is still 3rd choice in the NLE hierarchy. For context, see Final Cut Studio 4: a double scoop.

There's really no secret about the kinds of things Adobe could do to improve usability and mindshare beside luring the lukewarm from the Apple camp -- assuming that there are goals in addition to short-term sales. There's plenty of advice aimed at Apple that Adobe could implement. Beyond constant drumbeats pleading for Avid-style media management and Trim Mode (see FCP-List for pro/cons), there are more examples in the feature request list at FCPro.TV and advice from Oliver Peters on Improving FCP and Media Composer.

Update 3: humor from @BeetleCarDriver,

@editblog While you were gone Apple released FCS5...

@editblog ....My mistake, it was a ProApps update...

Update 4: maybe someday a Premiere fan will get a rebuttal from an Avid user; see Dylan Reeve on What IS the big deal about FCP?

Stand in the place where you are

After sorting out permissions and problems inherent in organizing free learning resources that caused blog outage, some oblique background processing is in order. Although people now use other labels like lizard brains and linchpins, Dante's vision of the cornices of Purgatory (pathological psychology) is still applicable.

Update: ah, now I remember why I posted this -- learning resources (you know who you are) have annoying bureaucracy too.

Caught in a food web

Speaking of competition & deadwood in motion graphics, there's an odd food web in the Lifeboat sketch by Monty Python:

TimeSpan: time tracker After Effects script

TimeSpan is a “Punch Clock” style time tracker, available as an After Effects script at AE Scripts. For more on scripting, see AEP's grab bag Expressions & Scripting Resources for After Effects.

Here's some of its features and a demo from author David Torno:

• Exports a .TXT (tab delimited) file to the folder of your choice.
• Can log by Client Name or Project Name.
• Logs your clock in time, clock out time, total hours, hourly pay rate and total pay
• Can log multiple entries per document.
• Reset button to clear accidental start time.

VFX Sweatshops + Spec Work

Talk about troubles in the VFX industry has continued since FX industry troubles: Lee Stranahan, Scott Ross + editing. Motionographer posted a rundown on the flurry of activity since then in VFX Townhall Recap and Links, and there's a bit more in AEP's VFX TownHall leftovers.

Scott Squires has been tracking the issue and recently noted the article on Hollywood's VFX sweatshops in Time magazine and offers advice for directors and producers in Visual effects service - The Big Picture and Getting the most out of your VFX budget. His latest note is on The Tragic Plight of Hollywood VFX Sweatshops at the blog Sinisthesia.

Also of note is The Indian Exodus by Steve Wright (who helps with outsourcing), from an interview by Stranahan at VFX Filmmaker. Here's an excerpt:

'There is much concern in the VFX industry about our jobs being outsourced to India, and even China [which bans unapproved reincarnation]. Indeed, India is rapidly booting up a visual effects industry and has a vast pool of low cost artists to staff it with. Since I have been to India five times to conduct VFX training (the most recent being a two-month visit to two different facilities) I am often asked about the “lay of the land” there. While India has much potential, they do have some systemic problems to overcome.
[...]
So what does all this mean to the worried domestic VFX artist? If I were a junior artist with only roto or paint skill I would be worried. The lower the skill and artistic requirements for a job the more vulnerable it will be to taking the exodus to India. To keep our well-paying domestic jobs we will need to continually upgrade our technical and artistic skills. Don’t just be a compositor. Be a lighter-compositor. Be the “shot finisher” with superb color correction skills. Get into stereo. Take some art classes and have an artistic hobby to show a potential employer. Bottom line - the higher up the VFX food chain you are the more secure your job is.'

Update: Grayscale Gorilla has some things to say in his post and video, Why the NO SPEC Movement Isn’t Working. And, Why That’s so Awesome!

Why the NOSPEC Movement isn't Working from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

Spill, baby, spill: Nigeria every year since 1969

Reports on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may jar even the jaded, though we'll have to wait to see how the politicos parse this. Climate Progress discusses malfeasance buried in a New York Times article in Shocking allegations against BP.

And via @bldgblog, also from the NYT is A Spill of Our Own, an op-ed by Lisa Margonelli, director of the New America Foundation’s energy initiative and author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank. She says:

"...Nigeria has suffered spills equivalent to that of the Exxon Valdez every year since 1969. (As of last year, Nigeria had 2,000 active spills.) Since the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, and the more than 40 Earth Days that have followed, Americans have increased by two-thirds the amount of petroleum we consume in our cars, while nearly quadrupling the quantity we import. Effectively, we’ve been importing oil and exporting spills to villages and waterways all over the world." [emphasis added]


Watch CBS Videos Online

Update: All this is especially exasperating for fans of Amory Lovins; see his Moving Past Oil is our Best Opportunity for a Profitable, Clean-Energy Future. See also The High Costs of Offshore Drilling: Deepwater Horizon Underscores Need to Find Sustainable Energy Solutions and Is Obama blowing his best chance to shift the debate from the dirty, unsafe energy of the 19th century to the clean, safe energy of the 21st century?

Here's Lovins' TED talk:

Open Forum for Motion Design Standards of Practice

FXguide’s Jeff Heusser had some comments on the VFX Town Hall in VFX Town Hall – how did it go, what did it mean? and John Nack mentioned NYT coverage of the brutal market for pro photographers.

And now via Filmbot is The Open Forum for Motion Design Standards of Practice:

"an open, collaborative site aims at establishing standards of practice for employers and employees in the motion design industry, including freelance animators, designers, art directors, and visual effects artists.The site's goals include:

• creating an organized repository of best practices for motion design employers and employees.
• providing practical tips for freelancers and contract artists.
• establishing and discussing ethical and professional standards for the motion design industry."

Motiongrapher had some background a few weeks ago in Freelance Standards of Practice.

Update: the Freelancers Union takes polls and exposes delinquent clients.

VFX TownHall leftovers for examination + VFX Union Panel/Chat Room

It's so over, making this post a bit repetitive, but hey...

Conditions can be tough for people working in advertising and visual effects as economic and technological pressures realign the industries. A flurry of stories last month (see FX industry troubles: Lee Stranahan, Scott Ross + editing), culminated in a VFX TownHall meeting last night.

If you missed it live, there's a Twitter potluck #VFXTownHall and audio of the event provided by VFx Haiku and to lighten the bandwidth burden by Fxguide. There's more to come, but for now some the glamor of VFX is discussed at Cracked in The 5 Miserable VFX Jobs That Make Movies Possible.

Update: via @alba #vfxtownhall sprouting corridors in every direction [Wednesday] tonight 7:30pm PST @dorkmanscott doing panel @ http://downinfront.net/vfx/ via @neonmarg

Update 2: Scott Squires, with VFX experience ranging from Close Encounters to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, posted VFX TownHall Meeting thoughts [and later added more].

Update 3: Creative COW avoids the term outsourcing in the recently published Worldsourcing: A Prime Focus on Global VFX Collaboration by Mike Fink, which uses another term -- Collaboration:the new buzzword in advertising, production, & online video.

You might compare "collaboration" to the other views noted earlier in The PEN story: another YouTube Dilemma and The Carrot is the Stick which noted Motionographer's Mass Animation=Mass Exploitation?

FX industry troubles: Lee Stranahan, Scott Ross + editing

Recently 2 news stories on the FX industry in China and California attracted wide attention (see VFX offshoring unpleasantness), and were followed by an Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists by Lee Stranahan in the Huffington Post.

Today Fxguide posted background info and an interview with Stranahan in fxpodcast: An Open Letter to James Cameron.

If you like this, be sure to check out the December 2009 Fxpodcast with industry pioneer Scott Ross on history and the future of the visual effects business as outsourcing away from the USA accelerates.

Update: even editors are worried about outsourcing now, with remote collaboration tools available like iChat Theater in Final Cut Pro 7 or Fuze.

Update 2: on 03/05/2010 Mark Christiansen asks, Is a Visual Effects Guild to Materialize this Decade? Fxguide has a few more items in Visual Effects link roundup.

VFX offshoring unpleasantness

Via NeonMarg and Flowseeker, 2 stories of unpleasantness:

* Working in China from VFX Wages
* California Visual Effects Industry Gets Weaker Every Day from Animation World Network.

Update: see the Feb 5 Open Letter To James Cameron: Fairness For Visual Effects Artists by Lee Stranahan.

Collaboration: new buzzword in advertising, production, & online video

Beet.TV alludes to New Tools Enable Video Collaboration:

"Collaboration is the new watchword in the advertising, production and online video businesses, Daisy Whitney reports in this week's New Media Minute. She explains how agencies, production houses and creators are turning to tools from Adobe, Wiredrive, and Facebook to craft new projects, including 'Mass Animation' in which animators from around the world contributed shots for the upcoming short film Live Music.

Daisy is also starting a contest for video creators to have their work featured in her show."



Update: Compare this story to the earlier The PEN story: another YouTube Dilemma, and The Carrot on the Stick which noted Motionographer's Mass Animation=Mass Exploitation?

The Carrot is the Stick

In Mass Animation=Mass Exploitation?, Justin Cone of Motionographer discusses a "new age of distributed creativity":

"When Mass Animation announced their goal of creating a CG short film by 'crowd-sourcing' the animation to a global community of thousands of animators, I had two initial reactions: 1) They’ll never pull it off, and 2) They shouldn’t pull it off.
...
To executives, though, character animation is the most mechanical part of the process, the most easily produced. After all, animation has long been outsourced to India and China [sorta].
Perhaps there’s a way to do it for even cheaper.As long as animators are willing to toss themselves into the ring for $500 a try, it would appear so. The promise of being a 'Hollywood animator' is still too great for many to pass up."

Meanwhile Flippant News sees the absurdity of bottom feeder clients who look for editors in Looking for work.

WGA Strikers & trying to count video streams

As momentum for internet delivery of TV and movies builds, it's clear there's a lot of money and basic rights at stake in the writers' strike. But there are more than a few uncertainties. Reel Pop notes and quotes a Shelly Palmer post on media business site JackMyers.com:

"Who in their right mind thinks that the 'number of video streams per quarter is a readily ascertainable number.' First of all, what is a stream? Is it defined as an open socket between a server and a client? What if the stream is peer-assisted? Does that count? How about progressive downloads that are abandoned before they are viewed in their entirety? Are they considered downloads or streams? What about downloads? Do they count? How about off network plays of previously downloaded material that actually has a reported playcount? Wait … there’s more. How about VOD streams over closed IPTV networks? That’s what the cable industry is about to turn into – technically every one of those plays is a video stream. Does it count if you stream data that updates creative on an HD-DVD or BluRay to change story arch or release additional material that creates a derivative work? I could go on for about thirty pages and not come close to creating a complete list."

Reel Pop has also covered aspects of online usage stats, noting that search for video is also important. Now for balance, here's an explanation of the groundbreaking new deal put in a way writers can understand:

Woody Allen on the Writer’s Strike

I think Brightcove could use faster loading and a Flash player that gives you a playlist of episodes (like others have had for awhile) -- there's more at United Hollywood's Speechless series.


Video via Crooks and Liars via WGA Strike: Same Old Same Old. More comments and metacomments can be found through FreshDV's CrispyFeeds RSS aggregator.
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